Note: while marriage specific, the guidelines are helpful regardless of the issue.

Find Your Elected Officials' Position on Marriage Equality

See where your elected officials stand on federal legislation that affects the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community. Note: This tool is provided and maintained by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Change Public Position on Marriage

One of the valuable things you can do is to help your legislator, or any candidate for public office, learn how to change their public position on an issue they have previously stated that they are against. This can be done via written communication with a public servant/candidate, or better yet, during a face-to-face meeting.

In March 2012, Third Way released How to Change Your Public Position on Marriage, a publication aimed at guiding politicians through this process in a way that shows strength, not weakness. While it is marriage specific, we believe the information can help you continue to advocate on other LGBTQ issues outside of marriage.

Means of Contacting Legislators

Listed in order of MOST to LEAST effective:

Personal visit to the local elected official’s office or legislator's home-state office or Washington DC office

Personally handwritten but LEGIBLE short letter

Personally typewritten or word-processed letter

Phone call to a key staffer in the office

Phone call to the reception staffers in the office

Personally written fax

An obvious form letter or fax

Personally written e-mail

An obvious form e-mail

Important Notes

Personal visits are very effective. You should be prepared to answer questions but more importantly, be ready to share your own personal story. Lists of facts and figures have a much smaller effect on changing opinions than your personal story on how this issues effects you or the ones you love. You do NOT need to be an expert, just a reasonably informed and concerned citizen able to articulate your views on the matter you are visiting about - and what you want the legislator to do.

While postal mail and faxes that are obviously form letters are low on the totem pole, action alerts often call for them, as they are easy and fast and can produce a large volume of response on an issue. Even if you are presented with a prepared form letter, however, please instead write your own if you have the time. A form letter/fax/email is the minimum action you should take. Personal is always better.

In emails, if you are a constituent, say so in the first sentence and include your full name, phone number and postal address so the legislator knows you live in his or her district.

Phone calls to key staffers (or actual legislators themselves) are usually difficult to arrange. The staffers in charge of answering the phone may be reluctant to put you through to the upper-echelon staffers, unless they know you are representing an organization. It never hurts to ask. You may have to try several times, and be prepared to give your message very clearly and quickly.

Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA) was the grassroots movement to win marriage in the United States. With the U.S. Supreme Court victory on June 26, 2015 the work of the organization - though not the larger movement - was achieved and MEUSA ceased formal operations, closing in late 2017. For inquires please contact lovewins@marriageequality.org.